Eye-on-Retail Daily Tipsheet Archives

“Walmart: Internal 10-Page Memo Obtained – Outlines Key Leadership & Org Changes” by Kim Souza at The City Wire. “Wal-Mart Stores Inc. outlined a long list of leadership and organizational changes for its growing global retail operations. Notice of these changes were given to corporate employees on Thursday (Jan. 9) via a 10-page internal memo, that was also obtained by The City Wire.” See the changes

“Target Tries to Find Its Place in the Big City” by Susan Berfield at Businessweek. “Target’s cheap-chic cachet would seem to make it a natural fit in any big city’s shopping district. But Target is often a cautious company. Wal-Mart Stores has been experimenting with smaller stores for more than a decade; Target opened its first smaller city store 18 months ago in Chicago.” Read more

“Target redesigning electronics section to pump up sales” by Salvador Rodriguez at LA Times. “Target rolled out the new electronics look late last year at a few of its stores in its home state of Minnesota. The company plans on expanding the design to 17 more stores across the U.S., including those in Burbank, Ontario and Alhambra.” Read more / See the video

“Home Depot: Designers Create Concept Store for Young/Urban Shoppers” at SEGD. “The Home Depot Design Center is the next-generation store concept by the venerable big-box retailer. In this innovative concept, the second-largest retailer in the world aimed to shed its unrefined warehouse image, suitable for contractors and hard-core do-it-yourselfers, in favor of a more polished look to attract a younger, urban demographic.” See the Concept

“Walgreen: More Fancy Stores & Beauty Products Coming” by Brigid Sweeney at Crain’s. “(Walgreen’s) operates 13 (fancy) stores in nine markets from New York to Los Angeles. Mark Wagner, Walgreen’s president of operations and community management, said the company wants to open additional stores in the next 16 to 24 months in cities including Miami, San Francisco, Houston and more in Los Angeles.” Read more

“Family Dollar Returns to Everyday Low Pricing; ‘Undercover Boss’ Fired” by Ely Portillo at Charlotte Observer. “Heavy promotions have hurt Family Dollar, Levine said. “You get caught up in a habit of continuing to run circulars” to advertise various sales. “We ran 11 events in a 13-week period in the first quarter. Our model is not built to sustain that level of promotional activity.”…Levine added that Family Dollar will tweak its merchandise assortment, but did not give details.” Read more

“Supervalu’s Save-A-Lot Chain Sees First Positive Comp Since 2012” by Mike Hughlett at Star-Tribune. “Supervalu’s national Save-A-Lot chain, a discounter along the lines of Aldi, had a 1.7 percent increase in same-store sales. It was the first time since 2012’s fourth quarter that Save-A-Lot’s same-store sales were positive. Analysts are betting on Save-A-Lot for Supervalu’s future growth.” Read more

“Sears Fights Off Haters on Company Blog” by Meredith Derby Berg at Ad Age. “With its earnings continuing to tank and its future called into question, Sears Holdings Corp. on Wednesday turned to an old standby for a company pleading its case to the media, analysts and consumers: the corporate blog…Sears said Thursday year-to-date same-store sales are down 3.9% and quarter-to-date comps dropped 7.4%.” Read more

“St. Louis Based Schnuck’s Names New CEO” by Kavita Kumar at St. Louis Post Dispatch. “Todd Schnuck, 55, will succeed his brother Scott in March as chief executive officer of the family-owned-and-operated grocery chain with 100 stores in five states…“While we’re not knocking the doors down, we’re running even to slightly above last year,” Todd Schnuck said of the company’s sales.” Read more

“Marsh Supermarkets (Indiana/Ohio) to shut down 8 stores by end of month” by Scott Olson at Indy Bus. Journal. “Following the closings, Marsh will operate 78 stores in Indiana and Ohio. Closing such a large amount of stores at one time is unusual for Marsh.” Read more

“Defending the Single-Use Plastic Grocery Bag” by Quentin Fottrell at Marketwatch. “Some reusable bags need to be used over 100 times before they’re better for the environment than single-use plastic bags…Another problem: Many reusable bags being sold at the country’s major retailers are imported. Wal-Mart sells reusable bags with slogans like “A little green goes a long way.” In fact, many have also come a long way—over 7,000 miles. Wal-Mart’s standard reusable bag (50 cents) is made in China.” Read more

“Bottled Water Flying Off the Shelves in W.Va – Residents Told to Not Drink Water Due to Chemical Spill” by John Raby at AP. “Once word got out about the governor’s declaration, customers stripped store shelves in many areas of items such as bottled water, paper cups and bowls. As many as 50 customers had lined up to buy water at a convenience store near the state Capitol in Charleston. “It was chaos, that’s what it was,” cashier Danny Cardwell said.” Read more

“How Tim Theriault helped turn Walgreens from a loyalty-program follower to a leader” by Kate MacArthur at Blue Sky. “He launched his Walgreens 2.0. agenda to upgrade and centralize customer data systems across 8,000 stores, catch up to rivals with a massive loyalty program, make employees more mobile through wireless devices and install cloud-computing systems. Theriault explains how he quieted skeptics and motivated teams around ambitious deadlines…” Read the interview